Avatar: For All Mankind
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: You'd think the discovery of sapient life beyond Earth would change one's outlook on the universe, right? Well, you'd be wrong. Least in some cases.


**For All Mankind**

Alex Stanworth hated Mars.

There wasn't much in this world that he hated, but of the things he did, Mars was among them. He hated that it took a month to get here. He hated that that month was cold, and cramped, and there were only so many movies one could watch or games one could play before the confines of a Company ship got to you. He hated that the one month travel time only applied to when Mars and Earth were at their closest, and how even in the 22nd century, space travel was still confined by the limits of fuel and distance. And even all that aside, even after arriving at Mars, landing on Mars, and spending a week in quarantine before being cleared, he still had to deal with the feeling of walking in a 0.35g environment, with the only windows in the domes showing the same dull red landscape. He hated how, working in the public relations branch of the RDA, that he had to sell Mars to the 18 billion people of Earth. Claiming that their shitty little lives would somehow get better once they moved to the red planet. Spending their days extracting iron ore and other minerals to ship back to a planet that was only marginally better than this one.

Still, he was here. Mars. Tharsis. Grafton Dome. Walking through the big wide corridors of power, or, rather, the corridors of a sterile interior with armed guards, dolly-bots, big windows that were pelted with dust, and insipid banners of smiling families in space-suits, standing under a Martian sunrise. Or sunset. He couldn't be sure, and hell, he'd helped design those banners. Luckily he couldn't be held accountable every time someone succumbed to asphyxiation, or worse, radiation poisoning. Sighing, yearning for an escape, he approached the security station that separated the administrative wing from the rest of Grafton Dome. A bored looking guard slouched over the desk.

"Stanworth, Alexander." He held his ID card forward.

"Course you are," the guard murmured. He swiped the ID card, pressed a button, and the door behind him opened. "Office of Director Raine, third floor. Can't miss it." He handed the card back. "Have a nice day."

Alex wished he could summon the will for a pithy comeback, but he didn't have it in him. He doubted that the guard before him was trying to be an asshole, or was born an asshole – spend long enough on Mars, the constant isolation did that to a person. Even Lunarites had the benefit of seeing Earth from the surface of their moon, and the knowledge that they could get back to mankind's homeworld in twenty-four hours. Less if they paid extra for it. Because as surely as money made the Earth turn, it made the likes of Luna and Mars turn as well. Heck, even the Venusian aerostat colonies and the Mercurian lunar outposts still needed money to function.

He wondered what his ancestors would have thought of this, he wondered, as he made his way through the admin hub. Humanity had dreamed of colonizing Mars for centuries. Of exploring the stars. Of finding new and intelligent forms of life, and going where no-one had come before. How'd they have felt to know that life on Mars was much like life on Earth? Monotonous. Dull. Prolonging the inevitable. He passed through the cubicles of dozens of men, women, and the multi-coloured rainbow in-between. All working on computers, all doing some of the few jobs in this universe that humans could still do as opposed to robots. As someone who made the RDA's image as squeaky clean as possible, Alex knew he could count himself lucky that he at least still had a job. That was more than billions on Earth could say.

_And what do you have to say? _He wondered, as he entered the office of Director Raine. _What was so important that you had to call me from the other side of Grafton for?_

He figured he'd find out soon. Whatever the case, he shook Raine's hand, and exchanged banal pleasantries. He knew Raine, or rather, knew _of _Raine. Everyone knew of Director Amelia Raine, even if they didn't see her face-to-face. But who he hadn't seen before was the person sitting in the corner beside her. A man with folded arms and narrow eyes, who looked up at Alex with…well, he wasn't sure. It reminded him of a Poker player, one who said little, but had a tendency to keep winning.

"This is Professor Morten," Raine said. "He'll be working with you on your new assignment."

Alex blinked. "New assignment?"

"Yes, Mister Stanworth, new assignment. Believe it or not, I didn't ask you up here to see the view."

_What view? _Alex wondered. Raine's office had one glass wall, and three concrete ones. It was bereft of any memorabilia or holos, let alone a window to the outside world. In essence, the perfect person to run Grafton Dome – no ties on Earth, and nothing to distract her from her job on Mars. Keep the mines running, keep the ore flowing, keep making the Company rich, and give civilization on Earth the means to keep itself above the ever-rising oceans

"Take a seat, please."

Alex obliged and looked at Morten. Morten didn't look back. Neither of them said anything as Raine began to pace around, a fist under her chin. Something was bothering her. Something big.

"Tell me," Raine began, "how much do you know about Pandora?"

Alex snorted. "Seriously?" He smirked, but it faded as soon as the director looked at him. "Pandora," he said. "Moon of Polyphemus, located in the Alpha Centauri trinary star system, orbiting Alpha Centauri A. Discovered in the previous century, with the ISV _Bradbury _dropping two ROVRs on the surface, followed by a single one from ISV _Venture Star_, not to mention an orbiting probe. Biodiverse, kind of a garden of Eden, mineral deposits of unobtanium confirmed along the way." He looked at Morten. "Unobtanium," he snorted. "Did we never come up with a name after that?"

"No," Morten grunted.

Raine sighed. "Go on Mister Stanworth. What else do you know?"

"Well, it's the only world known to hold extra-terrestrial life," he said. "I mean, extra-terrestrial multicellular life. I mean, crap, we found bacteria on Mars over a century ago, and some extremophiles floating in the clouds of Venus not long after that, but Pandora is…" He trailed off. He was stating facts, but he got the sense that these weren't the facts Raine wanted from him. "I know we're on our way there," he said. "ISV _Hermes _is set to reach there in…well, later this year."

Raine raised an eyebrow. "You don't know?"

He shrugged.

"You work in PR, and you don't know?"

"Ma'am, most of my work with the _Hermes _was done five years ago when the ISV was setting out. And trust me, it was much easier to get people to want to go to Pandora than to get them to move to this little shithole." He paused. "No offence."

Raine snorted. "None taken. Mars is a shithole. Unless we make a breakthrough in terraforming tech, it'll be a shithole for thousands of years before we can make it a little less shit. Still, this isn't about Mars. It's what's on Pandora." He glanced at Morten. "What we now know is on Pandora."

Alex frowned. "I don't follow."

Raine took a seat and looked at Morten. "Your show."

Morten rose to his feet. He made a flick of his fingers that dimmed the lights in Raine's office, while also causing the windows to polarize. Alex glanced at Raine.

"No-one sees or hears anything," Raine said. "What happens here stays in here until the higher ups deem appropriate."

Alex wanted to say something, but Morten had begun pressing buttons on a panel on one of the walls. After doing so, that same wall lit up from a projected image. Specifically of a very basic model of the Sol and Alpha Centauri systems. And in the latter, a very basic image of a probe orbiting Polyphemus.

"This is the Orion probe," Morten said. "It was dispatched from the _Venture Star_, and it's been in orbit for twenty years. Since then, it's been constantly transmitting data. Atmosphere. Lithosphere. Biosphere. We've learnt more about Pandora from Orion than we did in all the decades prior using deep-space telemetry, and just as much from the three ROVRs."

Alex nodded, but murmured, "and? I know about Orion. If it wasn't for Orion, we wouldn't even be bothering with Pandora. What about it?"

Morten frowned. "Orion sent this image over four years ago," he said. "Twenty-four hours ago, we received it via our Deimos station. Twelve hours ago, I received it. And now? You get to see it."

"Great," Alex murmured. "So, can I see-"

The image changed.

"…it?"

He stared at the image. Moten stared at him. Raine remained silent.

"That…are they…"

"Take your time Mister Stanworth, I know I did," Raine murmured.

Alex walked forward, tracing his finger over the subjects of the image. He took note of the date – 2/26/05. But most of his attention were on the subjects. The three humanoid, very big, very blue, bow carrying, tail-wagging subjects.

"Congratulations Mister Stanworth," Morten said. "You're one of a handful of humans who currently have concrete proof of the existence of extra-terrestrial sapient life."

Alex stared. Part of his mind told him that it wasn't that big a distinction. Extra-terrestrial life had been confirmed before this. In the case of Pandora, complex multi-cellular life. But with these blue humanoids, carrying bows, wearing clothing, however scant…there was no other word for it. Sapient. Perhaps a narrow definition used by mankind, but a definition nonetheless.

"This…this is…" He staggered back, before collapsing in a chair. He looked at Raine. "You got some water?"

She pulled out a bottle of scotch from a drawer in her desk. "For a special occasion," she murmured.

Raine was troubled. Morten, for his part, looked excited. Alex didn't know how he looked – thanks to the shades, he had no means of seeing his reflection.

"So, aliens," Alex murmured. "We're talking about aliens."

"Technically, we're the aliens," Morten said. He paused as Alex accepted a glass from Raine. "Which presents all sorts of problems."

Alex blinked. "Problems?"

Raine scoffed. "You really that dense Mister Stanworth?"

He looked at her. "Excuse me?"

Raine sighed, leaning back in her chair and gesturing to Morten. "Next image, please."

Morten obliged, and Alex saw himself looking at a map of the intended landing site for the _Hermes_. That, plus what would become the unobtanium mine. Plus, a series of red dots, each of them with a time stamp. He looked at Morten. "Are these…?"

"Confirmed sightings?" Morten asked. "All of them within a hundred klicks of the proposed landing site?" He nodded.

"Huh." Alex took a sip of the scotch. "So, few months from now, we'll be making first contact."

"Which is a problem," Raine said.

He looked at her. "Ma'am?"

She got to her feet, clutching her scotch like her life depended on it as she paced around. Morten's gaze followed her like a dog watching its master in expectation of a treat. Alex, however, remained seated.

"Ma'am?" he asked again. "Why is this a problem?"

Raine glared at him. "Use your damn head Stanworth and think."

"Um, yeah," he said, not liking her tone. "I am using my head. I'm thinking about the philosophical and religious implications of-"

"That isn't the issue," Raine said. She walked over to the image and tapped the intended landing site, followed by one of the confirmed observation sites. "This is the issue. This, and this, and this," she said, tapping each site with a "this." She swallowed more of the scotch. "Christ, we spend years observing Pandora and we're only discovering sapient life now." She looked at Morten. "How the fuck did this happen? We send three autonomous ROVRs, we launch a satellite, and we miss the existence of sapients until now?"

"Ma'am, I just worked at the listening post on Deimos. Astro-cartography isn't my-"

"Whatever. It's your problem now. And yours, Stanworth. We're in a mess, and you're going to help us get out of it."

"Ma'am?"

Raine chuckled and poured herself some more scotch. "You don't know," she whispered. "Years of working for the RDA, and you still don't know."

"No." He finished off his own scotch and glared. "Why don't you tell me?"

Raine swallowed some more scotch and collapsed back in her chair. "Fine," she whispered. "I'll tell you." She gestured at the image. "Those images are considered public domain – Pandora is no-one's territory until the colony is set up, which means that under the auspices of the Interplanetary Exploration Treaty, we're obliged to share them within seventy-two hours of their arrival. Which gives us forty-eight hours until every non-Luddite on Earth knows that we're not alone in the universe. And that in a few months' time, ISV _Hermes _will be making first contact with an alien species without any real contingency for that."

Alex remained silent. He was beginning to see where this was going.

"So," Raine said. "We're going to be using ansible to send an emergency transmission to the _Hermes_. To let them know that they're dropping into the territory of an indigenous sapient species. It's why our security forces are preparing for a more sizable deployment on ISV _Prometheus_, and why we're getting ready to recruit linguists, anthropologists, and all other manner of people whose profession ends in 'ist' for the next mission." She swallowed some more scotch. "Problem is, even if _Prometheus _launched today, it would take them nearly seven years to reach Alpha Centauri. Our half a decade of the colony and mine operating in the midst of bow-wielding savages who might not like that." She looked at Alex. "See the problem, Stanworth? See why I need you to spin this? Do you comprehend that we've just sent two-hundred and fifty-four men and women into a potential Hell, and we have no real idea of how to deal with it if the shit hits the fan?"

He nodded.

"Good. Because Doctor Morten here is going to be working with you. He gets credit for the discovery of the blue space elves, and you get to assure the world that this is great, and an exchange of goods and ideas will lead to prosperity for mankind and E.T."

"Um, ma'am?" Alex asked. "Couldn't we just postpone the deployment on the ground?"

Raine glared at him. "Postpone?"

"Yes. I mean…look. These…space elves. We don't know anything about them. We don't know if we can communicate with them. If they see us landing, if they see us mining, they might construe it as an invasion."

"It _is _an invasion," Morten murmured.

"And," Alex continued, "if we proceed knowing that, if we take the time to-"

"No," Raine said.

Alex blinked. "No?"

Raine sighed. "Mister Stanworth, I'm going to spell it out for you. The RDA has invested billions into Alpha Centauri. Unobtanium stands to make us trillions, not to mention revolutionize energy generation and transportation on Earth, not to mention space travel. And now, mere months from arrival at Pandora, you want us to hold back, because of a few aliens?" She sipped some more scotch. "I'm going to make it clear for you Mister Stanworth. Not. A. Chance."

Alex frowned. "Is that your policy? Or the RDA's?"

Raine didn't say anything. Silently, he doubted that the director was this jaded. That the confirmation of an intelligent species outside Earth meant so little to her. But then, the RDA was like a hamster. It kept the wheels of Earth turning, and was fed handsomely for it. If the RDA stopped, Earth stopped. And whether it be at Sol or Alpha Centauri, the hamster had to keep running.

"This is your job," Raine said to the two men in the moon. "Sell the public on first contact, sell it as a benefit, sell it so well that people won't stop to think twice about Pandora's bounty. Because we've got anti-matter reactors already under construction, as well as the global transport system, and we're not sinking this ship for anything. Understood?" Neither Alex nor Morten said anything. "Good. Now get to it."

The shaders rose, and light returned to the office. Alex watched as Raine returned to her terminal, as if nothing had happened. As if nothing had changed. And he continued to watch her even as Morten tapped him on the shoulder and beckoned him to follow.

"Right," he murmured. "Get to it."

Maybe this would change everything. Maybe, like the discovery of bacteria on Mars and Venus, it would change nothing. But still, Alex Stanworth knew at least one thing.

He still really hated Mars.

* * *

_A/N_

_So there was an article not too long ago from a NASA scientist claiming that life on Mars (extinct or extant, forget which) would likely be confirmed within the next few years, and that the world wouldn't be ready for it. Now, I can't speak for the nearly 8 billion humans on this planet, but I have to ask, if single-celled organisms were confirmed outside Earth today, would anything actually change? Certainly nothing practical would, and while it might prompt some philosophical discussion, I'm not sure if it would be an earth-shattering discovery. Bacteria have been found in some of the most inhospitable areas on Earth, the idea of it being found elsewhere wouldn't surprise me._

_Now, if this was sapient, or heck, even eukaryotic life, that's a different matter, but bacteria? I'd be interested to know what, if anything distinguished them from Earth's micro-organisms (cue panspermia discussions), but apart from that...yeah. In the meantime, drabbled this up. Admittedly it's a tangental relationship, but it's occurred to me that by the time the film takes place, there's no indication of humanity's outlook having shifted in spite of the confirmation of sapient aliens. Not that that's a flaw per se, since it would have happened awhile ago, but, yeah._


End file.
